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Kamala Harris Proposes Major Initiative To Help Millions Of Seniors — And Their Caregivers

The Democratic nominee has a plan to help the "sandwich generation," aging Americans and people with disabilities

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Tuesday proposed a major new initiative: #expanding #Medicare
✅to cover the cost of 💥long-term care at home.

👍Such a plan could mean the option of staying at home, rather than in a nursing facility, for the millions of seniors and people with disabilities who need help with the daily tasks of life.

It could also mean physical and financial relief
― and new opportunities for school or work outside the home
― for the millions of working-age Americans who today provide so much of that care on their own without much in the way of outside assistance.

If the proposed legislation is enacted, such a program would represent a substantial boost in 💖federal support for caregiving and, by any measure,
one of the largest one-time increases in American history.

Harris made her announcement during an appearance on “The View,” the nation’s top-rated daytime talk show,
and presented the initiative as a way to help the “sandwich generation”
― that is, the working adults who have aging parents while still caring for children.

Roughly a quarter of the American population falls into that category, according to Pew Research.

“There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle
― they’re taking care of their kids and they’re taking care of their aging parents
― and it’s just almost impossible to do it all,” Harris said.

“Especially if they work, we’re finding that so many are then having to leave their job, which means losing a source of income, not to mention the emotional stress.”
huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harr

HuffPost · Kamala Harris Will Propose Adding Home Care Benefit To MedicareBy Jonathan Cohn

After a brutal 2023, the vibes around #self-#driving #cars are improving.

#Cruise, the industry leader whose vehicle was involved in a #horrific San Francisco #crash last fall, has #rebooted under new management,

while rival #Waymo is #expanding to serve broader swaths of the Bay Area and Los Angeles
and #Tesla is promising a new #robotaxi service.

Although Americans say they remain #wary of autonomous driving,
boosters insist there is nothing to fear.
In fact, they foresee roads full of self-driving cars that are both #safer and #cleaner than the status quo,
a tantalizing prospect in a country where transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and residents are several times more likely to die in a crash than those living in other rich nations.

Enticing though they are, such arguments conceal a #logical #flaw.
As a classic 19th-century theory known as a #Jevons #paradox explains,
even if autonomous vehicles eventually work perfectly
— an enormous “if”
— they are🆘 likely to increase total #emissions and crash #deaths,
simply because ⭐️people will use them so much. 

theverge.com/2024/9/2/24232386

The Verge · What a 160-year-old theory about coal predicts about our self-driving futureBy David Zipper

I'm new to #Mastodon; I look #forward to #learning new things and #sharing things with others. I have some #college #education and a versatile #work #experience. I am in the process of #expanding my #horizons, so to speak. I hope to gain #followers and #follow interesting #influences. I love cats and dogs. I enjoy making new #friends and #networking. I like to go for short walks.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. Best wishes to you!

#intro
#introduction
#introductions
#Di_Libu

Replied in thread

A World of Slaves:
Most Americans haven’t seen what’s coming.

Nancy MacLean notes that when the #Kochs’ control of the GOP kicked into high gear after the financial crisis of 2007-08, many were so stunned by the “shock-and-awe” tactics of #shutting #down government, #destroying #labor unions, and #rolling #back #services that meet citizens’ basic necessities that few realized that many leading the charge had been trained in economics at Virginia institutions, especially George Mason University.

Wasn’t it just a new, particularly vicious wave of partisan politics?
It wasn’t.

MacLean convincingly illustrates that it was something far more disturbing.
MacLean is not the only scholar to sound the alarm that the country is experiencing a #hostile #takeover that is well on its way to radically, and perhaps permanently, altering the society.

Peter #Temin, former head of the MIT economics department, INET grantee, and author of "The Vanishing Middle Class", as well as economist Gordon #Lafer of the University of Oregon and author of "The One Percent Solution", have provided eye-opening analyses of where America is headed and why.

MacLean adds another dimension to this dystopian big picture, acquainting us with what has been overlooked in the capitalist right wing’s playbook.

She observes, for example, that many liberals have missed the point of strategies like #privatization.

Efforts to “reform” #public #education and #Social #Security are not just about a preference for the private sector over the public sector, she argues. You can wrap your head around those, even if you don’t agree.

Instead, MacLean contends, the goal of these strategies is to radically alter power relations, #weakening pro-public forces and #enhancing the #lobbying #power and commitment of the corporations that take over public services and resources, thus advancing the plans to #dismantle #democracy and make way for a return to #oligarchy.

The majority will be held captive so that the wealthy can finally be free to do as they please, no matter how destructive.

MacLean argues that despite the rhetoric of Virginia school acolytes, shrinking big government is not really the point.

The #oligarchs require a government with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people.
This, as MacLean points out, requires greatly #expanding #police #powers “to control the resultant popular anger.”
The spreading use of pre-emption by GOP-controlled state legislatures to suppress local progressive victories such as living wage ordinances is another example of the right’s #aggressive use of #state #power.

👉Could these right-wing capitalists allow private companies to fill #prisons with helpless citizens—or, more profitable still, right-less undocumented #immigrants? ☑️They could, and have.

👉Might they engineer a #retirement #crisis by moving Americans to inadequate 401(k)s? ☑️Done.

👉Take away the rights of consumers and workers to bring grievances to court by making them sign #forced #arbitration agreements? ☑️Check.

👉Gut #public #education to the point where ordinary people have such bleak prospects that they have no energy to fight back? ☑️Getting it done.

👉Would they even refuse children #clean #water? ☑️Actually, yes.

MacLean notes that in #Flint, Michigan, Americans got a taste of what the emerging oligarchy will look like — it tastes like #poisoned #water. There, the Koch-funded Mackinac Center pushed for legislation that would allow the governor to take control of communities facing emergency and put unelected managers in charge.
In Flint, one such manager switched the city’s water supply to a polluted river, but the Mackinac Center’s lobbyists ensured that the law was fortified by protections against lawsuits that poisoned inhabitants might bring. Tens of thousands of children were exposed to #lead, a substance known to cause serious health problems including brain damage.

Libertarian economist Tyler #Cowen has provided an economic #justification for this kind of #brutality, stating that where it is difficult to get clean water, private companies should take over and make people pay for it. “This includes giving them the right to cut off people who don’t—or can’t—pay their bills,” he explains.

To many this sounds grotesquely #inhumane, but it is a way of thinking that has deep roots in America.

In "Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative" (2005), Buchanan considers the charge of #heartlessness made against the kind of classic liberal that he took himself to be.

MacLean interprets his discussion to mean that people who “failed to foresee and save money for their future needs” are to be treated, as Buchanan put it, “as #subordinate members of the species, akin to…#animals who are dependent.’”

Do you have your education, health care, and retirement personally funded against all possible exigencies?
Then that means #you.

ineteconomics.org/perspectives

Institute for New Economic ThinkingMeet the Hidden Architect Behind America's Racist EconomicsNobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean